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How the City of Angels went to hell Progressives put principles over policy

A city in decline (Photo by David McNew/Newsmakers)

A city in decline (Photo by David McNew/Newsmakers)


October 19, 2024   6 mins

A journey through Los Angeles, the adopted home of Vice President Kamala Harris, offers a masterclass in urban dysfunction. As you drive through the streets of the southside, and along Central Avenue, the historic main street of black LA, now mostly Hispanic, the ambience is increasingly reminiscent of Mexico City or Mumbai: broken pavements; battered buildings; outdoor swap meets; food stalls serving customers much as one would see in the developing world.

Democrats, particularly in deep blue California and even bluer cities like Los Angeles, can clearly win elections. But what they can’t do is govern effectively. Virtually every Democratic city in the land is now in decline. Crime, especially of the violent variety, is rising. That’s shadowed by continued out-migration to less dense, more conservative areas, a trend that’s seeing the country’s biggest cities lose out economically.

But if signs of progressive failure are clear from New York to San Francisco, it’s Los Angeles where I feel it most keenly. I’ve lived here since 1975. Back then, the idea that this diamond in the sands could tarnish was unimaginable. But it has. Once a middle-class haven with a broad industrial base, LA now suffers the highest poverty rates in the state, and among the worst in the country. Dovetailed by failing schools and parks, and an exodus of residents and businesses, long-term prospects of this great American city look bleak — a future that could yet be translated right across the country. 

Beyond making life miserable for residents and visitors alike, the chaos on the southside has clear demographic consequences. When I arrived, almost 50 years ago, LA was the undisputed king of urban growth in America. From a population of barely 100,000 in 1900, the city grew to nearly four million. Now, though, the trend has reversed. Today, the city and county of Los Angeles, together home to 10 million people, has fewer residents than in 2010. Even worse, the state department of finance now projects that the county’s population will drop by over one million by 2060.

This is not an exodus, as some assert, of the poor, nor of blubbering Trumpistas. Rather, many  emigres now come from the city’s once-vibrant, multi-racial middle class. According to an analysis of IRS data, many are middle-income families in their childbearing years. LA is also losing the minorities and foreign-born residents who for decades sustained the city’s economic and demographic vitality. These days, African-Americans and Latinos instead flock to places like Houston or Miami in search of opportunity. “We are becoming more dystopian,” says John Heath, a lawyer and south LA native. “We can’t house people affordably and only build luxury, and there’s no place for a middle class.”

There’s a vicious circle here. As ambitious Angelinos leave, so too do the jobs that might have induced them to stay. That’s clear enough in entertainment, the city’s signature industry and a key funder of progressive politicians such as Harris. Consider Disney’s fabled Pixar studio, with production moving to other states or overseas. The once-promising space industry is in danger of being kneecapped too: just look at the departure of SpaceX

For the past five years, LA has lagged behind the national average for creating advanced industry jobs and, no less damning, Michael Kelly of the Drucker Institute at the Claremont-Mckenna Colleges, suggests that virtually every basic industry in LA, from manufacturing to finance and business services, has lost jobs or at best stagnated since 2019. Only the government-funded education and health sector showed significant growth. If the city had grown as quickly as the national average, Kelly calculates, it would have created 300,000 more jobs.

All this has happened in a city that once boasted a powerful business class. But now that so many firms have left, the city’s remaining “leaders” increasingly inheritors of wealth and well-placed middlemen seem remarkably relaxed about what’s happening. Many, Kelly suggests, prefer instead to focus on what’ll gain them cultural kudos. “They don’t care about fixing MacArthur Park or helping the southside,” is how he puts it. “All they care about is the Olympics.”

If, moreover, this was the story of one failing metropolis, that’d be bad enough. But LA’s decline reflects a similar trajectory experienced across the country. According to recent analysis, Texas and Florida are now the country’s high-growth hotspots. Just as striking, income growth in these mostly red states is about 40% higher than New York and New Jersey, as well as other liberal laggards like Oregon or Illinois. 

But how did it happen? How was it that Los Angeles, alongside other titans of the last century, weaken so dramatically. Certainly, a plausible answer presents itself when you examine the electoral map. Like other urban centres, after all, politics have headed relentlessly Left for a quarter century in LA. The last Republican elected citywide, Richard Riordan, left office in 2001. Nor does a reversal seem likely anytime soon: Democrats in LA currently outnumber Republicans by over four to one.

The city’s shift to a one-party system has exacerbated corruption, with several council members and commissioners accused of bribery. Yet amid scandal, Los Angeles voters last year elected Karen Bass as their mayor by a considerable margin. A career Leftist, she travelled to Fidel Castro’s Cuba as a member of the so-called Venceremos brigade. In 2016, to mark the dictator’s death, she issued a praise-filled obituary to the man she called the “Comandante”. 

Like her idol in Havana, she issues pronunciamentos and talks grandly about confronting homelessness and boosting the housing supply, the latter pledge now part of Harris’ campaign. Yet with the middle classes fleeing, and local Republicans nowhere, City Hall has little incentive to fix LA’s underlying problems. Despite all the claims about tackling vagrancy — LA is the second-worst homeless capital of America the City of Angels builds far fewer new homes per capita than almost every other large US metro. Unable to address the root causes of homelessness, Bass has instead fallen back on raising taxes and boosting government spending.

“With the middle classes fleeing, and local Republicans nowhere, City Hall has little incentive to fix LA’s underlying problems”

Given the city’s deepening budgetary hole, that’s perhaps inevitable, particularly when the tax base has fallen so precipitously. It hardly helps, moreover, that the mayor’s mild-mannered progressivism is making a bad situation even worse. Ultimately it’s about incentives in a one-party town. The plebs and the remaining middle class simply don’t matter compared to the key backers of progressive governance: the non-profit “blob” and public sector employees. This in part explains Bass’ reluctance to clean up the homeless camps, which are now legal, and her support for higher taxes, the source of wealth for those government workers who fund Democratic campaigns and specialise in “ballot harvesting” from voters in nursing homes. 

Factor in that burgeoning reputation for graft, and it’s no wonder some critics suggest that Bass has enriched non-profits and friendly developers while doing very little to improve life for everyday people. To give one example, LA parks are often in disrepair, particularly compared with nearby suburbs. The Los Angeles Unified School District, for its part, consistently underperforms compared to state and national averages, notably failing its mostly Latino student body. Since 2019, over 80,000 have dropped out of the district, which also suffers from chronic absenteeism and high levels of violence. Almost half of LA’s workforce is unsurprisingly low-skilled. 

 “The city can’t do much, they can’t fix the streets, the schools or the parks,” says Jack Humphreville, a retired investment banker who writes for City Watch, an online media outfit that actually covers what is happening in the city. “They just take care of their allies.”  

Beyond this litany of failure, meanwhile, the truly frustrating thing is that it doesn’t have to be like this. Southern California, after all, is blessed with superb weather, a legacy of technological innovation and a robust, minority-rich entrepreneurial class. Nor is every California town like Los Angeles. In many smaller cities, controlled by moderate Democrats and even some Republicans, the California dream is alive and kicking. Drive just ten miles from downtown Los Angeles, towards predominantly Latino cities like Southgate, and you’ll quickly find that the streets are paved, businesses are thriving, and homelessness is virtually nonexistent. Compare that with downtown LA, where the office vacancy rate is almost three times that of the independent cities nearby.

No less important, the fiasco in Los Angeles could yet impact the entire country. Though she speaks about poverty and racial discrimination, after all, Kamala Harris is ultimately the product of the same system as Bass: one that puts progressive rhetoric and ethnic voting blocs ahead of improving society as a whole. Abandoning the approach of old-school progressives such as Fiorello LaGuardia — one predicated on investment and practical successes from bridge-building to education — Harris seems happier putting day-to-day governance aside in favour of abstract crusades around climate change. 

All the while, LA’s population continues to fall, with younger Angelenos apparently even more dissatisfied than their parents. Residents of other blue cities feel similarly: barely 30% of New Yorkers think conditions in the Big Apple are excellent or good, down from 50% just six years ago. For their part, around half of New Jerseyites would rather live elsewhere. And as bad as all this is for the urban fabric, it could soon have a dire electoral impact for liberals everywhere. For while the exodus from places like LA doubtless benefit even incompetent Democratic mayors, the influx of voters into conservative areas equally bolsters the Republicans in Congress. Since 1990, for example, Texas has gained eight seats, Florida five and Arizona three. In contrast, New York has lost five and Pennsylvania four. California, which now suffers higher out-migration than many rustbelt states, recently lost a Congressional seat for the first time ever.

To put it differently, then, the Democrats have political as well as ethical reasons to up their game — but the resistance from progressives will be formidable. For while non-progressive Democrats have scored some victories in local elections, even in deep blue strongholds such as San Francisco and Seattle, and appear positioned to unseat Soros-backed District Attorney George Gascon, the pressures to change course fade as companies and the middle classes flee. In urban regions dominated by mobilised government workers, and a dependent population, Peron-style welfarism is all you need. Even with California’s sunny climate, that doesn’t sound like an appealing future.


Joel Kotkin is a Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Civitas Institute, the University of Texas at Austin.

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Kiddo Cook
Kiddo Cook
1 month ago

“I’m not there to ‘serve’ the public, I’m there to enforce the law and f*****g nick bad guys.” Over and out.

Aphrodite Rises
Aphrodite Rises
1 month ago
Reply to  Kiddo Cook

Surely, that is serving the public (good).

Kiddo Cook
Kiddo Cook
1 month ago

This is ‘serve’ in the U.K. context and means ‘social worker’ and not law enforcer.

Vidar Bøe
Vidar Bøe
1 month ago

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great.
I lived and worked in LA in 1999-2001. Me and my wife became Christians weeks apart. She by listening to Focus on the Family, and me from listening to Truth for Life while driving to work. We arrived with two children, and left with four and we had a blessed stay and enjoyed life in the great city. Crime was not something we ever noticed, people where friendly and God fearing.
Reading this article it’s hard to believe what is ongoing, and it makes me really sad. How is it possible that this great city is slowly turning into a run down desperate place for so many, with crime, poverty, food-lines, slums and what not. The author points to the democrats, but what is it about their governing that changes this place, changes this people? Is it the introduction of lawlessness through ungodly laws and policies that oppress the weak and corrupt the minds, that elevate what is morally wrong and base at the expense of truth, justice and righteousness? Is it the removal of God from every educational institution and public office?
This was written about another great city that fell:
“‘And many nations will pass by this city, and every man will say to his neighbor, “Why has the Lord dealt thus with this great city?” And they will answer, “Because they have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God and worshiped other gods and served them.”’”

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago
Reply to  Vidar Bøe

It’s been well-documented how and why LA problems have occurred. For instance, Freddie Sayers (Unherd editor-in-chief) produced an insightful documentary on this website about a year ago, including interviews with the people responsible for making decisions on the ground in LA. There have been other articles since.
It’s got nothing to do with your imagined deity.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
1 month ago
Reply to  Vidar Bøe

The author points to the democrats, but what is it about their governing that changes this place, changes this people?
Theirs is a philosophy built on envy, an abandonment of individual responsibility and accountability, and a belief that govt can and should be involved in every aspect of life, including those where the public sector has no experience or business being. The same scene is being replicated in Chicago, Portland, Seattle, and so forth. Policies that, on the surface, are presented as solutions to whatever the problem is have this perverse way of perpetuating the problem, almost as if that’s by design. Bottom line – their governing philosophy never considers the possibility of having been wrong and needing to correct course.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Vidar Bøe

Vidar, heads up, THERE IS NO GOD.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
15 days ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

UnHerd Reader, Heads up, GOD EXISTS and is the spirit of the Universe!

Pete Marsh
Pete Marsh
1 month ago

As the observation says, you can ignore reality for as long as you want, but you can’t ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
The ‘progressives’ (itself alluding to Marx) are experts at trying to batter reality into the shape of their dogma. With the results described here.
I hope the folk of Texas and Florida can resist the democrat refugee’s tendancy to try and replicate the disasters they fled from!

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 month ago
Reply to  Pete Marsh

We need to peg all public sector salaries to GDP per capita. That goes up, they get a pay rise. If it goes down they take a pay cut. Just like everyone else. That would focus the minds of Karen Bass and Sadiq Khan on the job we employ them to do – as distinct from the one they think they should be doing.

Emmanuel MARTIN
Emmanuel MARTIN
1 month ago

No solution until your remove the vote from the welfare class and from government employees.

Buck Rodgers
Buck Rodgers
1 month ago

I know it’s easy to produce examples of mental govt employees, but by and large they’re normal people living normal lives. Surely they are just as perturbed by junkies sh*tting in the streets and crime running rampant? Aren’t they? It doesn’t make any sense.

Emmanuel MARTIN
Emmanuel MARTIN
1 month ago
Reply to  Buck Rodgers

Government employees are estimable citizens, most of them are good people. But they have a core conflict of interest as our taxes are their income, and any public program no matter how wasteful or disastrous is a job opportunity for them.
Quoting the article “The plebs and the remaining middle class simply don’t matter compared to the key backers of progressive governance: the non-profit “blob” and public sector employees.  ”
As for the non-profit “blob”, a Milleiesque approach to the public funding of NGO is long overdue.

Philip Hanna
Philip Hanna
1 month ago
Reply to  Buck Rodgers

LA will always be an appealing place to live, no matter how bad things get. It’s a shame that it has gotten to this point, but there are so many great things about this city and area that you would be surprised at how much shit people put up with to live here. I moved out to the burbs long ago, and don’t miss DTLA one bit, but if you can turn a blind eye to the homeless (which isn’t as difficult as one might think), then you can still reap the benefits. It is still a culturally rich place with tons of hidden gems, although less so with the issues it has ignored for so long.
Not defending any policies, the democrats are definitely blowing it here.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
1 month ago

No representation without taxation.

Voters need skin in the game

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago

Is it just possible that LA was never in touch with reality. It was the home of hedonists and every whacky personal growth industry built on me, me, me. The delusional, illusional world of Hollywood, of body glamour, diets and fame, In the long term it was never going to work. It was like giving the keys of the city to a bunch of adolescents. What do you expect, no one cares.

Chauncey Gardiner
Chauncey Gardiner
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

Some of LA is surely like that. But not most of it. It’s a pretty diverse place.
Part of it populated with Chinese ladies in neighborhoods like San Gabriel playing Mahjong with their friends. South Central is notoriously not West LA just east of the 405 freeway. But, there is Laurel Canyon where lots of aspiring Hollywood types bunk down in the homes owned by friends who actually are managing to make a thing of it in Hollywood.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

The writer implies that similar issues plague New York, Chicago and other Democrat run cities.

London is heading that way too

James A
James A
1 month ago

I don’t want to draw too long a bow, but from an Australian perspective, our most progressive city is clearly Melbourne. It’s also got by far the most dysfunctional and sclerotic economy.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

I am just old enough to remember Los Angles and California in general, in the erly seventies, before homelessness. That was when rents were still cheap, and there were plenty of places all over, even in the nice areas. upward mobility was easier then, too. The US after Neoliberlism- and the Clintons and Obamas are Neoliberals just like Reagan and his ilk were- since by now BOTH parties are epic fails, no doubt about it. It’s just their styles that differ. Many people are moving out of the English -speaking countries. For good reasons, since they are all on the same page anyway. This is way more than Trump v. Harris. Before 1980 apartments were still getting built, ut after that year, it went to commercial buildings and parking lots. And but for luxury housing, generally nothing else gets built that’s moderate or low income. It’s all by design. I don’t want to believe this, but given how HAPPY these politicians are with the status quo of decay for 44 years, I’m leaning towards that view.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
1 month ago

The city got there by its own hand, just like a lot of other large, perennially blue cities in which intentions continue to carry more weight than results.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
1 month ago

This is the story of progressivism. They say they are going to change the world. And they do: for the worse.

John L Murphy
John L Murphy
1 month ago

I’m likely a rare reader in that I was born in L.A. over six decades ago. Kotkin, like many policy types, is all about growth. I’d welcome a decline in population. The city master plan in the ’60s envisioned no more than about three million. The county now has ten, the city over four. Any “rush hour” now extends into unpredictable times, day or night, weekend or weekday, as the sprawl means there’s no “traditional” one-way-in and out of the downtown, which doesn’t attract but a fraction of the traffic, dispersed between many urban cores, suburbs, exurbs, and local commutes all tossed in. He is correct about the luxury lofts and such, as the stupid AB50 Scott Weiner (SF Dem) law allows giant residences–I mean hundreds of units–within a half-mile of a friggin’ bus stop, no parking required, no environmental reports, and multi-dwellings replace single-family tear-downs in any neighborhood, regardless of what the neighbors think. This alone is condemnation for the corrupt city council, mayor, and supposedly “socialist” allies.

Aphrodite Rises
Aphrodite Rises
1 month ago
Reply to  John L Murphy

I think the problem is probably associated with the economists who cannot abandon the belief that the bigger the economy, the greater the prosperity and to create a bigger the economy, it is necessary to increase the population. Despite, previously, the countries with the largest populations were associated with greatest poverty.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 month ago

Increased GDP means more revenue for the state and bigger profits for the corporations. Hence the enthusiasm of public sector and corporate bureaucrats for mass immigration.

mike flynn
mike flynn
1 month ago
Reply to  John L Murphy

High density housing and no parking provision. Been contemplating this brutal crime for several years. And yet they get the votes.

Will K
Will K
1 month ago

If I were homeless, I’d move to LA, due to the nice weather for outdoor sleeping.

Thomas Wagner
Thomas Wagner
1 month ago
Reply to  Will K

And the near immunity from police interference?

Martin Layfield
Martin Layfield
1 month ago

Joseph de Maistre claimed the Jacobin and Thermidorean terrors of the French revolution were divine punishment for the French for indulging Enlightenment philosophy and for committing regicide. I have come to think perhaps the social pathologies of many contemporary western cities are punishment (divine or otherwise) for embracing insane and wicked ideologies.

William Cameron
William Cameron
1 month ago

The last thing the left want is economic success. They gain their sense of purpose from generating victims so they can claim to represent them.